Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Monday, December 3, 2012

Myth busters (Part 2)

With the UN rewarding Mahmoud Abbas
for his intransigence it is timely that I issue part 2 of “Myths Lies and Damn
Lies - Myth Busters” (see November 7th 2012). On this subject I was recently privileged to
engage in an online debate with a member of the extreme left. The experience
was worth the pain. I shall pass on my conclusions (and hopefully my insights)
in the near future.

Myth busters (Part 2):

6)Israel
started it all with its aggressive settlement policies that forced out the indigenous
Arab population

Israel
was part of the feudal Middle East where large
landowners owned most of the land and most peasants had no rights of
ownership. Israel
settled most of its territory prior to 1948 on land that was dollar for dollar the
most expensive and least productive agricultural property in the world. Fantastic
profits were made by landowners who sold the land to Jewish farmers and that included
the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (Muslim leader of Mandate era Palestine) the Nazi Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin
el-Husseini.It is difficult to justify
calling all of the Palestinian Arabs ‘indigenous’ because Arabs were primarily conquerors
and indigenous to Arabia.Many of those that fled in 1948 were
themselves immigrants from Arab nations seeking a better economic future in
Jewish areas of Palestine
who were then betrayed by their Arab leaders. They were actively prevented from returning to
their homes in neighbouring countries.

7) Israel was the
aggressor in 1948

Wrong. Israel accepted
the UN proposal for a much diminished Jewish State within indefensible borders.
It accepted an internationalised Jerusalem under UN
control.The Arab States rejected an independent
Palestinian Arab state living peacefully beside Israel out of a malevolent desire
for conquest. Egypt,
Iraq, Transjordan,
Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria (the 6 original members of the
Arab League) rejected Jewish independence and said they would destroy the nascent
Jewish state. Britain
retained refugee camps in Cyprus
for the anticipated but limited number of Palestinian Jewish survivors. Transjordan offered Israel
limited autonomy within its greater Arab empire but effectively ruled out any
negotiation with Israel
on independence. Egypt and Transjordan intervened to prevent the
emergence of an independent Palestine. Similarly Syria
aspired to conquer as much of Israel
as possible for its own Greater Syrian empire.

The Arab League Army was corruptly mismanaged. In contrast to the Arab League Army, the Arab
Legion was the Arab worlds’ most effective fighting force. Created by Britain
in 1920, the Arab Legion was financed, armed and administered by Britain and
commanded by British officers. Lieutenant-General
Sir John Bagot Glubb, (aka Glubb Pasha) was the Legion's commander.The Arab Legion actively participated in the 1948
Arab-Israeli war and was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Jewish
Jerusalem; they were also responsible for the massacre of 129 people at Kfar
Etzion, just outside of Jerusalem, on May 13,
1948 the day before the formal declaration of Independence. The murdered included a Palestinian Muslim
family living in peace and co-existence amongst their Palestinian Jewish
brothers and sisters.

In the case of a massacre carried out by British forces
Britain suffered only
momentary diplomatic embarrassment but it was also a message of what Britain was
offering its Arab friends in support of their genocidal cause and against
Jewish self-determination.

8)Jerusalem belonged to
the Arab people prior to Israel’s
conquest

To extract from an earlier article “JfJfP and the
failure of Hasbara”: In May 1948, Jerusalem
had enjoyed a Jewish majority since around 1828, 120 years prior to Israel’s War of
Independence. The British officered Arab
Legion captured the Old City and the remainder of East
Jerusalem. It proceeded, one must assume with British Foreign Office
agreement, to ethnically cleanse the city of its Jewish residents and then to
obliterate the physical evidence of a Jewish presence.Only the Western Wall was left intact. But no
Jew would be permitted access to its holiest site for 19 years, until its
recapture by Israel
in 1967.

9)There
would be no Israel
without the Shoah

See my previous post “Colonialism, Palestine
and Israel” The second last
paragraph states “Israel
would have come into existence as a modern nation state with or without the
Shoah.The means of its tumultuous birth
was an issue for diplomatic recognition only. It does not detract from the need for and
therefore the inevitability of Jewish independence that Israel achieved on May 15, 1948” as an
expression of its self-determination in Palestine.

10) Israel should
take back all the refugees.

A refugee is usually someone who has lived in a country
their whole life before being expelled, or, whose existence in their country of
birth suddenly becomes precarious. If a
refugee is accepted as a permanent resident the next stage is to permit them to
become citizens of their new home country, thus resolving their refugee status.
Their children become citizens of the
country in which they were born or the country to which they are resettled. In
1948, the definition of a Palestinian Refugee was created and it is unique in
history and continues to be so to the current day. According to the definition set by the UN it
is anyone living in Palestine
between 1st June 1946 and 15th May 1948.Any immigrant
was defined as a refugee and was liable to support from the UN agency set up
uniquely for Palestinians.

This is bizarre because it meant that Iraqis refused
permission to return to Iraq
and Egyptians in Egyptian refugee camps likewise refused permission to return
to their Egyptian homes became refugees. All of their descendants also became
Palestinian refugees.

Depending on the degree of radicalism of the
Palestinian political movement the definition of Jewish Palestinian can be
anyone born in Palestine prior to 1881 (George Habash’s group) or any Jew who can
prove their family originated in Israel prior to the Balfour Declaration of 1917.There may be some who accept the UN
definition of 1948 (which included Jews) but this is a mute point as all Jewish
Palestinian refugees became Israeli citizens. The last Ma’abarah (refugee camp) formally closed
in 1958 but I was living in Netanya in 1976 when the last group of Jewish refugees
living in a shanty town on the outskirts of my own wretched neighbourhood were forcibly
moved into proper housing.

The total number of Arab refugees in 1948 was declared
to be somewhere between 300,000-400,000 and 950,000 but even the Quakers
admitted that the 250,000 refugees they had on their books in 1948 included a
significant number of people who were technically not classifiable as refugees,
even under the UN definition. The unbelievable thing about the UN Palestinian
definition is that it is virtually eternal – refugee status is passed from
generation to generation. It has
been said that this refugee definition was adopted to punish ‘the Jews’ for the
assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte in September 1948.

3 comments:

She just became increasingly vituperative in her response - all the usual anti-Jewish epithets that are masked as anti-Zionism. She failed at every opportunity to respond to what I was saying other than to use the tired clichés of the fascist left, so if I mentioned Arab imperialism she ignored it and renewed the attack with greater vehemence. I should have seen the warning sign. The moderator used the old canard that if you are a friend of Israel you cannot be open-minded or fair-minded. Of course this is a racist argument because it is only 'our kind' and out supporters that they would ever say this about. They would never dream to say the same of themselves. 6,000 words were exchanged - that is 13 typed A4 pages of debate - but it was like she was shouting at me, wearing ear-muffs so she couldn’t hear what I said and looking the other way so she could depersonalise me!

The most enigmatic question why the left appears to ignore the religious agenda of Islam as a threat of future world security and they do not seem to worry about their current imperialistic agenda. This agenda is being supported with investment in building Arabic community schools and centers all around the world.